4 November 2012

31st Sunday in Ordinary Time / All Saints’ Sunday
Ruth 1:1-18 / Mark 12:28-34
4 November 2012


Today we enter the final four Sundays of the Christian calendar year … the church calendar, just slightly “off” from our January-December one, the church calendar runs from the first Sunday in Advent through the last Sunday in the Ordinary Time / after Pentecost cycle which we call Christ the King.
I hope you noticed a shift in the emphasis of the texts we just heard. Where, over the past month, we’ve been sinking our teeth into some substantial theological concepts each week … working our way through Job, one of the most intricate and difficult books of the Bible … and meeting some challenging characters, challenging in the questions they’ve asked of Jesus, and the situations they’ve put him in: the rich man, wanting to climb his gold plated ladder to eternal life; James and John, wanting to sit immediately with Jesus in eternity ...
... well, now, these final 4 Sundays of the church year, we go “back to the basics,” as if to signal that we’re wrapping it all up, and getting ready for something new.
That old – yet ever new story is the Advent of our Lord, the Messiah … which, once again, is coming soon ... in four short weeks. But first, we have some review work to do … good review work, especially, as we also close out our year-long Nativity emphasis on Holy Baptism, those “flowing streams of living water” which move us to grow in our discipleship journey in Jesus.
Today … we start at the beginning, a very good place to start … with the Word that is Greatest of All.
After last week’s brief encounter with a Gospel character – the blind beggar Bartimaeus – who actually “gets it right” about Jesus ... acknowledging his, our proper place, following Christ’s call to repentance ... this week, we’re right back to another challenging character, like the rich man, like James and John.
Oh, certainly, this scribe, on the surface, doesn’t seem very challenging to Jesus. Indeed, he’s quite complementary.
Or is he?
His question of Jesus often gets misinterpreted as a question about “the first or greatest commandment.” Meaning, that this gets interpreted as a question about LAW. In reality, though, the scribe “gets” that Torah – that Hebrew word which gets interpreted as LAW – Torah is really about a whole way of living, The Way of living – the first, of ALL living that is to follow it, into which the Lord has called his people Israel.
Jesus answers the scribe, reciting back two passages of Hebrew Scripture, from Deuteronomy and Leviticus:

The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

Jesus follows this with the words, there is no other commandment greater than these.
It is an understandable, though at the same time, confusing answer from Jesus.
Being “commanded to love” sounds rather odd.
The word for “love” which Jesus uses here ... it’s that “God-love” word ... you may recall, a sermon of mine from some time ago, when I went over those different Greek words for love ... where our American English only has the one word, “love,” the Greek language of Jesus’ time had three ... erotic love, philanthropic or good-will love, and agape or “God-love,” the self-giving love which has its source in the heart of God.
So can love be commanded?
Well, one answer would be ‘no,’ it can’t, since love necessarily means a change of heart and that can’t be commanded ... you can’t make someone love you. But ‘yes’ would also be the right answer, since “God-love” has actions implied, actions which are often at our own sacrifice, which are for the good of the other person ... our neighbor. And those actions can be, are commanded, by God.
Whichever the scribe thinks, he’s not saying. But what he does say, sounds pretty good, don’t you think?

You are right, Teacher; you have truly said ... ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’ – this is much more important than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.

And doesn’t it sound like Jesus thinks he sounds pretty good too?

You are not far off from the kingdom of God.

He’s not far off.
But neither does Jesus say that the scribe is in it, either.
He’s in the vicinity, but he’s circling.
Why?
Well, think back to some of the words we’ve heard Jesus say, over the past few weeks, about entering the kingdom of God:
You enter it as a little child.
You enter it by emptying yourself, by taking up your cross and following Jesus.
You enter it through repentance; hearing God’s Word, paying attention, paying attention to how far short you, I fall from what God wants for us, and then, asking forgiveness.
This scribe, he sounds good, he speaks well, he knows what it takes ... but, perhaps, probably, likely, he just can’t go there, for whatever reason. Maybe he’s too tied to his wealth or his reasoning or his wanting to be Godlike himself.
So he’s not far off.
But neither is he in, living it, living the rich, full life of the kingdom of God which God intends, wants, wishes, wills for him ... for us.
You want to know who is?
Ruth.
Yes, that’s right, Ruth. She who is NOT an Israelite, but a FOREIGNER ... an idol worshipping foreigner, at that ... Ruth is our Scripture – illustration today of one who “gets” what “God-love” is all about ... one who is living into the Spirit of the words Jesus gives.
Ruth – the book- is a great story to read. It’s short and to the point. Coming in the Old Testament right after the book of Judges ... yes, that book of Judges, which, depending on your mood … we either enjoyed or suffered together last fall ... Ruth is a story which bridges the transition between the story of God being faithful through the patriarchs … Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Aaron … through the time of the Judges … through to the Kings … Saul, and particularly David. Indeed, at the end of the book of Ruth, we get a genealogy which shows God’s faithfulness to his people … through Ruth … to David. Ruth … this idol worshipping foreigner … she is the one God chooses to bring his kingdom into this world … to David … and yes, as we follow that story through the Scriptures … through the line of David, to Jesus Christ.
We seldom hear readings from the book of Ruth in worship … sometimes, at weddings, because of those indented words on page 8 of your worship folder …

Where you go, I will go;
Where you lodge, I will lodge,
Your people shall be my people,
And your God my God.
Where you die, I will die –
There will I be buried.

Certainly these words sound good and right and true as wishes, sentiments, hopes and dreams of a newly wedded couple … but don’t let those sentimental feelings cloud the clear, right, true, jarring nature of what’s going on here.
This is a story, these are words of life-changing conversion.
Naomi and Elimelech, along with their two sons … these people from Bethlehem in Judah, settle in the hill country of Moab … Moab, Israel’s neighbor, and oftentimes enemy.
Elimelech dies, leaving Naomi with those two sons … Mahlon and Chilion … and perhaps forebodingly, ominously, their very names point toward their future … Mahlon means “sickly” and Chilion, “frail.”
The two brothers marry Ruth and Orpah, sisters from the country of Moab … and, SURPRISE … Sickly and Frail both die, too.
So Naomi decides to go back home to Judah.
But before she goes, she does the right thing … she releases Ruth and Orpah to stay with their own people, and their own gods.
Orpah does just that … she goes back home to her people.
But Ruth stays with Naomi … indeed, she shows God-love here … loving her mother in law Naomi so much, that she acts at her own sacrifice for Naomi’s benefit.
That’s a whole lot deeper than nice words at a wedding. This is life-changing, converting God-love at work. No wonder we have this reading on All Saints’ Sunday. Ruth is a saint, for sure … whether or not she’s recognized by the church, given a medal or a day, or not … her actions, her showing of self-sacrificial God-love … that’s saintly behavior, for sure. A right, and true life example to follow.
And so often we miss this aspect of God-love.

As church consultant Bill Easum says, quite truthfully …

I’m convinced that we have confused “love others” with “being nice,” that we have taught ourselves to be nice instead of Christian. People who would rather be nice than Christian do not love enough. They do not have enough compassion. Instead they are afraid of hurting someone or of being hurt. But fear is the opposite of love: “Perfect love casts out fear” – 1 John 4:18.

The scribe doesn’t get this. He is “not far from the kingdom of God” but isn’t there, because he’s circling it, observing, speculating, offering pithy aphorisms about God and love and everything that’s right and true, but he won’t jump into the flowing streams of living water himself, for whatever reason … most likely, fear. What would they say, what would they do? It’s better … easier … to offer speculation rather than life-changed proclamation … better to stand around the synagogue and talk gladiator scores or imperial politics or hasn’t the weather just been awful lately, than to ask each other in faith and love, “how have you seen God active in your life the past week?” … to listen, with care and love, to the answers … and if the answer is “well, I haven’t seen God this week,” to not let go and walk away, but to keep with and at it, to find out why, and more, to offer himself ... to offer ourselves, in that sacrificial God-love, so that the answer we get next time we ask isn’t “I didn’t” but “I did, through you.”
So you see, Ruth gets this; her saintliness comes primarily through her sacrificial God-love. What she does is God-love, and it isn’t necessarily nice to everyone … certainly not to her own people, her own sister, her own family back home in Moab, to whom she turns her back forever. But remember, this isn’t nice love, it’s God-love.
Again, think of those saints we commemorate today … saints of old, saints in our own lives. Do we think of them as saints because they were nice people … living an innocuous, polite, oops excuse me kind of faith?
No, of course not. Paul? Peter? Martin Luther? Mother Teresa? Certainly not. They were not always nice people. They were loving people, living lives of God-love into the world, but we would never say they were always nice. Peter and Paul both got arrested for getting in the faces of the local authorities. Luther was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church for his theology, and his sometimes mean-spirited words and actions. Mother Teresa would stop at nothing … and no one … in her care for the poor … some of her words certainly accuse us, here, in this very wealthy country, today.
But we know other saints who have faithfully reflected that God-love, too. My grandmother, who insisted that her grandson go to the Lutheran church for confirmation … I, who much rather preferred worshipping at the church of Vince Lombardi and Roger Stauback each Sunday morning with my dad. Nope. Not nice. But I’m glad she wasn’t nice about that … I probably wouldn’t be here today if she was.
And you have similar stories.
God-love isn’t always nice-love. It’s sacrificial … self-giving … insistent … never giving up … in the words of St. Paul, it’s not arrogant or rude, or insisting on its own way … but it rejoices in the truth.
And getting to the truth of it all … isn’t always nice.
Indeed, Jesus suffered and died for The Truth of It All … that we all fall short of God’s glory, that only through him, his life, his suffering, his death, his resurrection … his call for our repentance, his word for our forgiveness … only through him, are we made right, and true, and whole … people, of and for his kingdom …
… all saints, all brought to walk wet, to splash and play in the flowing streams of living water, our hope, for the life to come, and for the life that is now.
That’s right, now. Saint-life, God-love, is meant to be lived out now. For, all the saints who from their labors rest … they don’t need our God-love. They are already and eternally immersed in it.
For all the saints who are in their labors now … that’s where we are called to be. Living like Ruth, freed by God’s Word, let go and letting go, hearing God’s call and sent to respond in God-love, to and for the sake of the world …
…the world, who so desperately needs to see and hear and experience the kind of God-love which is described in the song we sing next … with words by Bp. Desmond Tutu …

Goodness is stronger than evil; love is stronger than hate;
Light is stronger than darkness; life is stronger than death;
Victory is ours, victory is ours, through God who loves us.

For all the saints … o saints of God, o saints of Nativity, this is our call. To live God-love into the world, all ways, in all ways.
Through and because of Christ, who is with us always.
Amen.